The Associated Press released a story yesterday about the rise in households without a landline telephone. The story mentions one consequence of growing reliance on cell phones that is often neglected in this kind of story: polling and survey research, which APLIC’s members rely on in their work.

Growing numbers of surveys now include calls to people on their cells, which is more expensive partly because federal laws forbid pollsters from using computers to place calls to wireless phones.

This makes it particularly difficult to reach low-income and young adult populations, which are more likely to have only a cell phone.

Perry Building, home to ICPSR and the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center

Those who attended the tour of the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center during the APLIC conference last week learned about this and other challenges in survey research, including declining response rates, the expense of in-person interviews, and the new challenges of collectign biological samples in conjunction with surveys.

We then moved to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), where we learned about the challenges of data archiving and access.

The following day, ICPSR director Myron Gutmann gave a keynote about spatial data and confidentiality. “You cannot have spatially explicit information without identification,” he said. But, he added, “spatial information adds tremendous value to research.”

Gutmann’s talk was based on a book (Putting People on the Map) and an article (Providing Spatial Data for Secondary Analysis) he wrote.

The challenge, Gutmann said, is to figure out how to responsibly share data where there are significant confidentiality risks. Data collection is very expensive, as we’d learned the day before at the Survey Research Center, so it makes sense to get as much use out of it as possible.

While Gutmann noted that there have been no significant breaches of confidentiality from research data, the risk is great. Even if a data archive removes identifying and spatial data, spatial data published elsewhere (such as a map in an article) could present a disclosure risk when combined with the data.

Gutmann encouraged researchers to think about data dissemination “early and often,” and to avoid publishing potentially identifying information – for example, acknowledging sample units such as schools and hospitals in articles.

As for the future, Gutmann believes that data will move to distributed online systems which will combine data on the fly, recognize confidentiality issues automatically, and build user communities based on dynamic data use. In the mean time, we can continue to expect institutional solutions to data security, ranging from the least restrictive (web access) to the most (data enclaves).

After the APLIC conference, I headed to Detroit for the Population Association of America annual meeting. There a panel of experts echoed some of the same concerns about survey research, and called for more work in survey methodology.

Keith Hall from the Bureau of Labor Statistics explained how technology is changing the way they conduct surveys. While technology can increase capabilities (BLS does a lot of internet data collection), it doesn’t necessarily decrease costs, contrary to popular belief.  When funding decreases, they continue to produce data, but it is of lower quality because of reduced sample sizes and training.

Howard Hogan from the U.S. Census Bureau began his remarks by talking about the initiative to change the Survey of Income and Program Participation from using surveys to using administrative data. Hogan was in favor of the change initially, but has since been won over to the advantages of surveys, which include:

• Flexibility. Questions can be added relatively easily.
• Quicker results.
• Sub-annual data.
• Consistency. Questions not subject to the whims of administrators.
• Greater potential for public use. Respondents cannot be identified by administrators.

With all these advantages, Hogan noted that in the end, surveys are not even much more expensive than using administrative data. He did note that there are many ways to combine survey and administrative data to find useful information.

Barbara Entwistle from the University of North Carolina talked about the new National Children’s Study, an example of a nationally representative survey collecting many types of data, including biological, psychological, chemical exposure, and medical.

I came away from listening to all these experts feeling that it is an exciting time to be involved in population research. There are major changes that, while they present risks and challenges, greatly increase the amount and kind of data we can collect to better our understanding of ourselves.

Report from the APLIC 2009 conference, submitted by Margie Shiels

A panel of APLIC members described some of the tools they had been using for Web tutorials – or just in time teaching. I think we all walked away excited about the potential applications of these tools which ranged from free to low cost.

Morgan Grimes, Population Action International

Jing is a free tool though there is also a “pro” version where you can get additional features for a minimal charge ($15 a year). The free download allows you to create videos of 5 minutes or less. It doesn’t allow any editing, so you have to start over if you make a mistake, but for simple videos that record your computer actions, it’s a good way to go. It seems simple to use, too, so it’s not an intimidating tool to try.

Lori Delaney, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Captivate is an adobe product that allows you to create more advance tutorials with quizes and audio as well as video. While the list price is $795, you can get educational discounts from the company.

CPC used Captivate to create a Popline tutorial.

From the group

Tara Murray (Penn State) has Camtasia though she hasn’t had much change to use it yet.

Corrine Farrell (IntraHealth) has used Articulate for orientations and Camtasia to do a Sharepoint tutorial for field office staff.

Lee Ridley (Univeristy of Michigan) has simply been using Photoshop and PowerPoint, but prefers the seamlessness of the e-learning tools presented.

Julia Cleaver (Ipas) has seen a tutorial developed for orientations for new hires, but it was outsourced, so no telling what was used and no way to edit it as things change at her organization. For her library orientations, Julia would ideally like a system that used online tutorials for some parts, but still allowed the element of human interaction.

There are also a couple of additional tools that have allowed folks to record audio with PowerPoint presentations. The ones above will also do this. Lori has used Audacity – free at CPC. At Ipas they have used Elluminate. They get a special low price for being a member of LINGOs.

Bye, Tech: Dealing with Data Rot
CBS Sunday Morning, March 1, 2009

Sooner or later, it affects every audio recording, video recording and computer file. Contributor David Pogue looks at what happens when technological progress leaves your most precious memories and recordings behind.

Full story here and video here:

New Collaborative Online Medical Encyclopedia Launches

The Medpedia Project announced the public launch of the beta version of a technology platform for the worldwide health community. Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School, and other leading global health organizations are contributing in various ways to Medpedia. The goal of The Medpedia Project is to create a new model of the way the world will assemble, maintain, critique, and access medical knowledge. It will, over time, be a repository of up-to-date, unbiased medical information, contributed and maintained by health experts around the world, and freely available to everyone.

è       http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/wndReader.asp?ArticleId=52687

 

I found this article [Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers] in the January 2009 McKinsey Quarterly (you need to register to read content) very thought-provoking (maybe just provoking).  Some of the points he made that triggered reactions/emotions from me (in the order they appear in the transcript) are:

 

1. …we’re going to have a totally different concept of what it means to go to work. The work goes to you, and you’re able to deal with your work at any time and any place, using the infrastructure that’s now become available.

2. When we’re all networked, we all have access to the same documents, to the same capabilities, to this common infrastructure, and we can improve the way work—intellectual work, knowledge work—flows through the organization.

3.  Back in the early days of the Web, every document had at the bottom, “Copyright 1997. Do not redistribute.” Now every document has at the bottom, “Copyright 2008. Click here to send to your friends.”

4. …there is typically a revenue-generating component somewhere in the value chain. And most commonly today we’re seeing it on the advertising side.

5. “What is it that’s really scarce in the Internet economy?” And the answer is attention. … “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” So being able to capture someone’s attention at the right time is a very valuable asset.

6. Because now we really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data. So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand that data and extract value from it...skills—of being able to access, understand, and communicate the insights you get from data analysis—are going to be extremely important.

 

 I’d be interested in others’ reactions or opinions of his points.  But I do just want to share this piece, as it brings to the fore the issue of attention (as related to time, especially the “right time”) and understanding.